From the New York Times, I'm Katron Ben Holt.

This is the Daily.

Today, long after schools have fully reopened, my colleague Sarah Mervos,

describes a more permanent shift in the way kids and their parents think

about being in class after the pandemic,

which is that school feels optional and kids are still missing a lot of it. It's Tuesday, April 2nd.

Sarah.

Sarah, you're an education.

Sarah, you're an education reporter and you've been looking at what's happened in schools since the pandemic,

when kids missed many hours of class and fell way behind on their learning targets.

It's been three years since most kids went back to school. and fell way behind on their learning targets.

It's been three years since most kids went back to school,

so one might expect things to be almost back to normal,

but you found something surprising.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, things are really not back to normal, even though it has been quite a while since most

or all kids have come back to the classroom.

So for example, we know that kids are still academically behind since the pandemic.

On average, U.S. students have made up about a third of their pandemic learning losses

in math and about a quarter of their losses in reading.

So overall, academically, students are not back to where they would have been without the pandemic.

Got it.

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